Rage and Grief
Life under the sun
The classics world is all chattering about Emily Wilson's new translation of the Iliad, and with good reason. Wilson produced an astoundingly modern, provocative, and poetic translation of the Odyssey in 2018, which was one of the first audiobooks I listened to. It (rightly) received critical acclaim. Naturally, people wondered immediately if Wilson would also do the Iliad, and here we are in 2023 with her translation.
Despite the fact that I teach ancient Greek, Homer is one area that I do not spend a lot of time. Homeric Greek is quite different from the later periods that I normally read and teach in. I have read a couple of books in Greek, but it doesn't come easily to me. I have read both epics through, many years ago, and more recently listened through them both. Listening, I tell you, is a far better experience. Even in translation, these are poems for the ear more than the eye.
And they have grown on me. I can see why some classicists spend their whole lives immersed in Homer. These are monumental works of oral literature, and they cannot help but touch upon the universal themes of human life. That's one reason for their enduring and widespread appeal.
Homer's world, though, is very alien to us (even if it is also very familiar). The lives of Greeks and Greek-adjacent people in the age of epic does not bear much semblance to 21st century late stage capitalism in the secular west. The introductions to Wilson's two translations are excellent in providing a host of interpretive and cultural frames to help you grapple with that.
Today, though, I want to talk about the Iliad. What is the Iliad about? My suggestion here is neither novel nor profound, but nonetheless let me put it forward: death, grief, rage. The opening lines certainly set you up to understand that one of the central axis around which its (very narrow) narrative scope revolves is the rage of Achilles and his conflict with Agamemnon. Soon, too, we see that it is the personal and inevitable conflict between Hector and Achilles. And, not to be left out, it is about the love between Achilles and Patroclus. Each of these dyads form poles around which the story spins in various orbits. Achilles' rage against Agamemnon sees him sitting the battle out, to devastating effect for the Greek troops. Achilles' love for Patroclus provides the pivot whereby Patroclus' death occasions Achilles uncontrollable grief, and thus redirects his uncontrollable rage, changed from the cold flame of sullen resentment to the white hot flame of fury. In all this, there is death upon death. It is a world of death. In the midst of that death, men rage against the dying of the light, slaughtering each other with abandon, because the only thing they have to live for is glory, and the only hope they have is that their reputation, their name, their glory, will outlive them. It is all very sobering. Towards the end of the first section of introductory material, Wilson draws a profound connection between the Iliad and our world:
…in a world where soon no people will live at all, and there will be no more stories, and no more names. You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad, and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you know this unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time."1
Do you know what the Scriptural counterpart to the Iliad is? I think it's Ecclesiastes. Because the book of Ecclesiastes is a prolonged study on a single subject - life under the sun. And what does that phrase mean? Everything that the Teacher says about life in Ecclesiastes, his whole research project, his statements, are all conditioned with this proviso, "under the sun." That is, it’s a picture of life without reference to anything "above the sun". To put it another way, if we live in a world that is a closed system, and there is no God that exists outside the world, then everything the Teacher says about life under the sun is true: it's meaningless, it's vanity, it's mist, it's hebel.
There's a solid commentary on Ecclesiastes by Tremper Longman III, and he follows Michael Fox in understanding the final part of the book, 12.8 onwards, as being a comment from a narrator who frames the whole book. It's a commentary on the commentary. Which then becomes a way of saying, "hey, this whole book you read, it's got some good stuff but it's dangerous and possibly misleading". Which is (as per Longman), quite like Job - a long book in which we are told that most of the contents are liable to mislead you! Anyway, I haven't quite reflected deeply enough on Longman and Fox's proposal, but I don't think it's incompatible with my above comments. If this world and this life is all there is, life indeed is meaningless. This is existential despair. .
To return to the Iliad then. Homer's world is a closed system too. The Olympian gods do not sit outside it, they are also bound by Fate and the universe they inhabit. They dwell in bliss, and at the same time are afflicted by limitations, and very human-like foibles. Mortals, though, are doomed to die after their allotted time, and then their shadowy souls go off to Hades' realm, to dwell in darkness for presumed eternity in something less than human existence. This life, this mortal life under the sun, is really all there is. And it's characterised by one, inescapable fact - death. Though even life, we must say, is characterised by suffering. At the top of the social hierarchy sit the warriors and the warrior chieftains, competing endlessly with each other to gain and retain esteem, almost always by depriving others of goods, social and material, and life. Women, in this world, are always secondary and almost always lose. No wonder that the men rage in fury against each other, the gods, and their impending deaths. They rage to make a name for themselves that might outlive them. And for what? We could do worse than to quote the Smashing Pumpkins: despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.2
Achilles' grief at Patroclus' death is unassuageable, because nothing can undo death and loss, and so grief is ultimate. The only means of somewhat diminishing that loss is vengeance, which leads to Achilles' similarly unslakeable thirst for payback - no amount of dead Trojans will satisfy because no number of Trojan corpses can every bring Patroclus back from the dead. Achilles' battle fury is also conditioned by the fact (prophesied, and constantly mentioned to him) that he too will die soon. Hector's death does not quench Achilles’ rage, but (arguably), when Priam and Achilles unite in grief in book 24, their solidarity brings a kind of peace (if temporary) in the common lot of all mortals - that those we love die, never to return, and we who live on do so with utter loss, and the knowledge that we will follow.3
Emily Wilson (tr.) The Iliad, Introduction, “Memory”.
In it's less well-known Ancient Greek version, μαινόμενος καίπερ ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς
I suppose you want some hope. That’s the thing, the Iliad doesn’t provide it, beyond the hope that your name and deeds will resound through the ages. Ecclesiastes doesn’t provide it except almost as a shadow - the hope that things do mean something more than the meaninglessness of life under the sun. Which is true, but it’s the gospel.